Nintendo records first financial loss

Nintendo has reported a ¥37,320m loss for the year ended March 31st 2012 in its latest financials, marking the first non-profit year for the company, although still a lower loss than expected.

The company had predicted a loss of ¥65,000 million (£500.5m, $799.5m), however thanks to the improved fortunes of the 3DS, things weren’t quite as bad.

Overall sales fell 36.2 percent year-on-year to 648 billion yen (£4.9b), the 3DS sold 13.35 million units worldwide, while on the software side Nintendo managed to shift a whopping 36 million 3DS games. The overall total for Nintendo 3Ds sales now stands at 17.1 million worldwide.

DS sales were down more than two thirds with 5.1 million units sold, which in turn means that 151 million units are now in the wild. Nintendo DS Software shifted 60.82 million units.

As for Wii, the ailing console sold just 9.84 million hardware units, with lifetime sales now at 95 million. Wii software sold 102.37 million, which is down from the previous year’s 171 million units..

Nintendo is forecasting an operating profit of 35 billion yen (£267m) and sales of 820 billion yen (£6.2b) for the next financial year as it expects the Nintendo 3DS to become profitable.